How do judges of the California Court of Appeal reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

California Court of Appeal / Joined 1979 / Active

Coleman A. Blease

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Coleman A. Blease is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal (89 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), serving since 1979. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1929 · age 97
Tenure: Since 1979 · 47 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

University of California-Berkeley		1952
University of California-Berkeley		1955

Judicial Record

In our data, Blease authored 349 published opinions for the court (1979–2019), plus 8 dissents and 31 concurrences. Most cited: City of Sacramento v. Drew (255 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 388 of these were attributed to Blease by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1989	City of Sacramento v. Drew†	207 Cal. App. 3d 1287	255
1991	FPI Development, Inc. v. Nakashima†	231 Cal. App. 3d 367	163
2006	Century Surety Co. v. Polisso†	43 Cal. Rptr. 3d 468	149
2009	Teselle v. McLoughlin†	173 Cal. App. 4th 156	136
2005	People v. Carmony†	26 Cal. Rptr. 3d 365	116
2011	Leek v. Cooper†	194 Cal. App. 4th 399	101
2006	Johnson v. Superior Court†	49 Cal. Rptr. 3d 52	93
2014	Carlsen v. Koivumaki†	227 Cal. App. 4th 879	89
1990	Blain v. Doctor's Co.†	222 Cal. App. 3d 1048	80
1984	Andalon v. Superior Court†	162 Cal. App. 3d 600	75
1984	In-Home Supportive Services v. Workers' Compensation Appeals Board†	152 Cal. App. 3d 720	72
2012	People v. Louie†	203 Cal. App. 4th 388	71
1986	Constance B. v. State Ex Rel. Department of Transportation†	178 Cal. App. 3d 200	69
1982	People v. Adrian†	135 Cal. App. 3d 335	61
1994	Ostling v. Loring†	27 Cal. App. 4th 1731	56

Showing the 15 most-cited of 388 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the California Court of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court is Coleman A. Blease on?: Coleman A. Blease is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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47 years on the California Court of Appeal. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).